


Flickers Passing By

by doublelead



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Urban Fantasy, Urban Legends, Youkai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 04:18:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11959557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublelead/pseuds/doublelead
Summary: It was his two-hundred-fifty-sixth spring he thinks, when he was cursed. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, water droplets like glitter under a sun shower. During a fox’s wedding, the gods decided to play him a trick; he had been counting raindrops, the ripples marring the puddle by his feet when it all stops. Blue skies reflected under his geta where the water stills, there’s a shadow over his shoulder, the rain stops knocking on his forehead.“You’ll catch a cold,” the human had said to him, taking his hand. His eyes are bright blue, like the painted sky on the underside of his umbrella. “I like the water. I’ll be okay.”





	Flickers Passing By

**Author's Note:**

> this was the resulting ficlet for [Sierra](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sierra/pseuds/Sierra) from a twitter prompt thing

Haruka vaguely recalls, from childhood stories before: urban legends told in hushed whispers, scared huddles of students by the shelves at the back of the class, their hands cupped around their mouths, a rumour that spread throughout whole third grade.

‘ _If it rains at three o’clock at the old bus stop near old man Yanagizawa’s farm, you could see a man dressed in a grey kimono and half a walnut shell covering his head waiting by the schedule board behind the curtain of water pouring from the roof overhang.’_

He remembers Makoto squeaking then – at nine years old, still a fair bit shorter than him, cowering behind him and leaving distinct fingertip-shaped bruises on his shoulders.

‘ _He just stands there, but he doesn’t get wet. His eyes are vacant, a cold mint. He counts as he looks to the sky.”_

“They say,” Mochizuki had said, lowering his voice even further. “If he looks back at you when he reaches ten, he’ll come looking for you later that night.”

It was the fastest way for Makoto to arrange an impromptu sleepover, inviting Haruka over to share the bed along with the twins and all twenty-three of their shared plush toy collection tucked between and all around them.

—–

It was his two-hundred-fifty-sixth spring he thinks, when he was cursed. Cherry blossoms were in full bloom, water droplets like glitter under a sun shower. During a fox’s wedding, the gods decided to play him a trick; he had been counting raindrops, the ripples marring the puddle by his feet when it all stops. Blue skies reflected under his _geta_ where the water stills _,_ there’s a shadow over his shoulder, and the rain stops knocking on his forehead.

“You’ll catch a cold,” the human had said to him, taking his hand. His eyes are bright blue, like the painted sky on the underside of his umbrella. “I like the water. I’ll be okay.”

Sousuke was left that day with his fingers curled around the hooked handle, counting footsteps instead, until the young human turns a corner at the crossroads downhill, disappears behind the next bus as it stops by the schedule board in front of him.

—– 

“I don’t like being indebted to humans.”

Sousuke learns quickly, that the human boy had a name – Haruka, his friends had called him – and that he couldn’t actually see him. He isn’t a seer, isn’t anyone special, just someone that happened to get caught in a god’s little game.

He should be, as far as Sousuke is concerned, just another insignificant encounter in his life.

Haruka is waiting for the bus, on a summer Sunday afternoon. He’s leaning back against the wooden wall of the bus stop, his shoes kicked off his heels, hanging by the toes.

“I want to give you something in return,” Sousuke says to the air between them, knowing the other couldn’t hear him.

He stands quiet, under the shade beside Haruka, his feet straddling the line crossing into the sunlight. The bus comes, five minutes early, and he counts the two steps it takes for Haruka walk out from under the roof, and the other three it takes for him to climb into the bus.

—– 

Sousuke still has the umbrella with him, clutched tight to his chest, on his two-hundred-fifty-ninth spring. The last times he saw Haruka was during the winter. He was dressed in black, holding some kind of canister and a flower corsage over his breast pocket, then again a few days later wrapped in a red scarf while pulling a large suitcase behind him.

Two steps away from the waiting bench, three steps up from the bus door.

He doesn’t know how many raindrops it takes for the bus to disappear down the road.

—– 

Sousuke’s life had always been a series of numbers – water drops like seconds from the dips at the edge of the bus stop roof, the steps he takes from one end of the bench to the other, the tens of millions of ripples across puddles since he has last seen the sky under the umbrella over his head.

He had lost count though, of how many times it rained, or of how many cherry blossom petals fell since he last time he followed the beat of Haruka’s footsteps.

—– 

It’s by his three-hundred-twenty-seventh summer that Sousuke realises, that their paths were never meant to cross again.

He thinks it’s worth a try, to see where Haruka had gone, at least. Humans don’t live that long; it might be too late, he might not even find him, in the end.

—– 

The next bus that arrives is the first one Sousuke has ever set foot in. He picks a seat at the back on the furthest left, were sunlight streams from the windows and onto the seats, passing through his knees.

—– 

Haruka is eighty-seven years old and living in Tokyo when he wakes up one day to find an old umbrella leaning against his bedside drawer – the canopy is worn and dirt-dusted, the handle covered in little scratches.

The clock on his wall dings three in the afternoon, and rain starts to knock on his window. Raindrops against the glass dots shadows across his wood floor, stretching to the foot of his bed from under a pair of _geta_ shoes.

“Ah.” Haruka follows the lines of a dark grey kimono, traces up the flaps and folds, to look into mint green eyes, dark under a walnut shell-shaped hat. He smiles, small, a private joke. “I was wondering when I was going to get cursed.”


End file.
